Pacific Rim 2: First Set Picture of John Boyega in Jaeger Gear

Pacific Rim‘s long-awaited sequel, now officially titled Pacific Rim: Uprising, has finally been picked up and starting to film in Austrailia earlier this week. Steven DeKnight, best known for producing the Daredevil Netflix series as well as Smallville, will be set for first time directing and will also be one of the writers.

Previous director Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth) will not be returning due to scheduling conflicts (We’re all hopelessly praying for Hellboy 3), but will still actively work as a producer.

Australia soon took notice of the film, as a Sydney resident going by tessaluccy on Instagram took the following snapshot on the movie’s set of their star John Boyega of Star Wars fame.

Boyega was announced to play the son of Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), but whether it was going to be official he would be a Jaeger pilot had not be confirmed until now, as he appears to be in piloting gear for one of the robots. For all we know, it could even be his character is still taking the training wheels on a gargantuan Jaeger. None of the previous characters have been confirmed to return, but we can only hope for some sibling bonding time with Rinko Kukuchi’s character, Mako Mori.

What many people may not be aware is that Boyega not only happens to be starring in the film, but his very own production company, UpperRoom Productions Limited, also happens to be co-producing the sequel to del Toro’s colossal sci-fi alongside Legendary Pictures. The original Pacific Rim had it’s great cult following but losing to the box office to Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups 2 that week left it bittersweet in its success in America’s box office (It did, however, do phenomenally well in the international markets). After years of no news, it seems ready to be picked up again in full faith, so we have Finn himself to thank for that.

So it looks like John Boyega will be able to pilot his own John Bojaeger. He’s going to fit into this fandom just fine.

Will the apocalypse be cancelled a second time? Pacific Rim: Uprising comes to theaters February 23rd, 2018.

The hominal scoundrel Martin Lis is a man of many worlds: script writing, voice acting, producer, marketing student, and for ScreenGeek.net, one of the more unconventional article writers. With tongue-in-cheek commentary, Martin aims high with his less than traditional opinions, insightful editorials, and likes providing more bang for the buck in details of films, animation and comic stories, especially their history.